Kevin was concerned. No, he was more than concerned – he was panicking. He was the school captain but he didn’t feel he was really in charge. It was unfair, he thought, that everyone expected him and the Student Representative Council to fix all the problems.
The schoolyard was smelly. The stink had been around for a while, but it was getting steadily worse. It was starting to become unbearable. (more…)
It’s easy to get carried away over things that are free, such as briefcases stuffed with money or being offered seats in the pointy end of an aeroplane. Stories can be woven around simple incidents, but often the truth will suffice.
Still in New Zealand, my wife and I were following signs to an historic village museum in Auckland. A wrong turn and there it stood – a lone briefcase. It occupied the edge of a car space, right in the middle of a car park. There were a few cars parked around the periphery. We looked at each other. I decided I’d better relieve the briefcase of its loneliness. (more…)
“This is the final wake-up call for passengers travelling on flight EK460 to Auckland. We apologise for disturbing you but we must insist you board the plane and we invite you to continue your slumbers in the cramped seats in sub-economy class C.”
I wake up with the jolt of the wheels touching down. I uncramp myself and smile at my wife uncramping herself next to me.
Yes, I’ve escaped from the kitchen and left the dog in the capable hands of number one daughter. I expect both to survive for a week. (more…)
Today we are urged to remember something that many men and women are still trying to forget – Armistice Day. Like ANZAC Day, it brings back memories of the atrocities they witnessed or were forced to be part of. And what is forgotten on this day of remembrance is that, even on the day that World War 1 ended exactly ninety-one years ago, it took some six hours for the ceasefire to take effect. Germany had already surrendered a day or so earlier – the document was signed at 5 am, and was worded to not take effect until 11 am. Was the ritual timing so important? How many thousands died in those six hours? (more…)
What does one do when one sees an activity that has become a trend that can easily lead to horrible outcomes? Especially when there are examples of just that happening?
One can write to one’s Member of Parliament and Senators. One can write letters to newspapers. One can call talk-back radio. One can write a blog. But, before going public with details, one had better be sure of one’s facts.
As regular readers of this column will know, I can get righteously angry about things, and this is one of them. (more…)
What you are now reading is the world première of ‘From the Kitchen #23’. Last week you read the world première of #22.
Last night I was at a concert of the Australian Chamber Orchestra at which Richard Tognetti played the world première performance of ‘Vox amoris: Fantasy for violin and orchestra’ by Pēteris Vasks. It was billed as the world première, but it wasn’t. It had been performed by the ACO earlier in the month in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. (more…)
Here we go again. Another sports season. This time it’s racing. Football (all codes) has only just gone. Cricket will be next, interspersed with sailing. Then back around to kicking balls of various shapes. As they currently advertise on ABC radio, “The sport continues; it’s just the ball that changes.” Oh, I forgot the Australian Open tennis and the Grand Prix. Give me a break!
But a break we won’t get. (more…)
Vivaldi in the rain. How wonderful to be sitting inside near the heater, dog at my feet, a steady, heavy rain forming a curtain outside the window, with Vivaldi’s oboe concerto in F (RV447) with oboist Alfredo Bernardini, playing loudly; filling the house with soaring, sonorous cadences and thrilling demi-semi-quavers. Ah, nature and nurture in a beautiful harmony. (more…)
A few days ago I saw someone in a wheelchair. My jaw dropped and I stared. Not at the person wheeling along, but at the name on the chair – the brand name: Karma. I’m not kidding. You can look it up on the Web; I did, as soon as I got home.
Who would come up with such a name? Who would allow it to be attached to a wheelchair that they want to sell? Who would sit in such a wheelchair?
I’m now on the look-out for other choice branding. I’m expecting to see a pram with the label lust; crutches called Idiot; condoms with the name Oops; the next incarnation of the Windows operating system: Dukkha … (more…)
The world is crazy until we make sense of it. We spend our lives making sense of it, giving it meaning. The problem for each of us is that, once meaning had been ascribed, the world seems to conform to that meaning and we relate to it as if that is the way it is.
What is difficult for us to grasp, is that the person standing next to us probably lives in a different world, shaped by whatever meaning they have placed on it. I’m not suggesting that this is wrong or bad (we can’t do otherwise), or that we should remove all meaning from our experience (we can’t). (more…)